Recession, USA

Ronald Reagan--not my favorite politician of all time, but a guy who knew how to reach an audience with a pithy and entertaining remark--once said:  "A recession is when your neighbor is out of work.  A depression is when you're out of work."  He repeated that "ad nauseum" all the way to the White House in 1980.

I recalled this whenever I hear some economist or pundit---such as George Will or anybody on Fox News who draws a regular paycheck from Rupert Murdoch--going on about how the United States  is NOT in an economic recession.  Technically, he/she might be right---you need to have two quarters of negative economic growth to say the national economy is in such trouble.  Our last quarter showed national growth at 0.6 percent.  We are just having a "rough patch" as George W. Bush put it yesterday in a press conference.  Of course, this overlooks how the Executive and Congressional branches of our government--Republican and Democratic--have changed the way Great Washington Worthies figure gross domestic product and unemployment stats.  All iin the name of making things look better than they are.     

I say we need a new way to determine we are in a recession, not just a "rough patch" or an "economic downturn".    In the Spirit of Reagan, I say  are in a recession when a firm majority of Americans feel insecure enough to say we are in a recession.

We are in a recession, folks, otherwise four out of five adult Americans are dense and they aint. Eighty-one percent of the Americans polled in a recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal believe that the US is in a recession. People know this because many of them are losing sleep worrying about higher and higher gas prices and see no end in sight--they know this when they see their neighbors unable to sell their homes in the ever-softening housing market and watch as foreclosures signs go up.  They know we are in a recession when they read about local layoffs online and in the newspapers. 

Just this morning, for example, one of southern Oregon's  biggest employers--Erickson Crane, a industrial helicopter manufacturer--announced that they were laying off  35 mechanics. Those are serious, highly-skilled jobs lost in a major company. 

Meanwhile, The Federal Reserve has taken the prime lending rate down to 2 percent to try and dig us out of the economic morass.  And news reports show that the number of people looking to sell household goods and expensive items  over on eBay and Graigslist and other online selling services is at an all-time high, as is the desperation people have in the ads they use to sell the items.

Of course, this has been a rough couple of years or so for a lot of people--like the entire middle-class as a whole.  A recent editorial by Cynthia Tucker in the Atlanta Journal- Constitution points out its been a while since we've seen things looking up for anybody on the whole but the highest income-earners and getters in the American economy.  

To quote Ms. Tucker:  

 "Here's what the new economy has done for the average American: precious little. In 2000, median yearly household income, in 2006 dollars, was $49,447, according to The Wall Street Journal, which crunched data from the Census Bureau. By 2006, median household income had fallen to $48,223.

"While the economy expanded significantly starting in 2001, those gains went disproportionately to the wealthiest households. The income of the top 1 percent grew at an annual rate of 11 percent from 2002 to 2006, while the incomes of the remaining 99 percent grew at less than 1 percent annually during those years, according to the Journal."

When you've been running in place and getting nowhere despite all your hard work for awhile, it's easier to notice when you and your neighbors are falling behind.

 What this means for the national elections coming up in November is that the economic fears that are stressing people out--coupled with an unpopular war--spell a lot of Republicans losing their seats this year. 

Luckily for the GOP, however, the two Democratic Presidential candidates are so busy tearing into each other and pointing out the dangers of the other person in the White House, that Obama and Clinton's camps may just bloody each other's reputation so well that it puts John McCain into the White House next January by default.  (Despite the fact that Mccain is tight with George W, and  Prez Bush's approval ratings are the lowest in recorded history accord to the Gallup Poll.)

I'm sure, if he were still around, Ronald Reagan would have something pithy and entertaining to say about that ironic development.